{"id":86639,"date":"2019-01-13T06:22:20","date_gmt":"2019-01-13T14:22:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2019\/01\/technique-identifies-electricity-producing-bacteria"},"modified":"2019-01-13T06:22:20","modified_gmt":"2019-01-13T14:22:20","slug":"technique-identifies-electricity-producing-bacteria","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2019\/01\/technique-identifies-electricity-producing-bacteria","title":{"rendered":"Technique identifies electricity-producing bacteria"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/technique-identifies-electricity-producing-bacteria2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Living in extreme conditions requires creative adaptations. For certain species of bacteria that exist in oxygen-deprived environments, this means finding a way to breathe that doesn\u2019t involve oxygen. These hardy microbes, which can be found deep within mines, at the bottom of lakes, and even in the human gut, have evolved a unique form of breathing that involves excreting and pumping out electrons. In other words, these microbes can actually produce electricity.<\/p>\n<p>Scientists and engineers are exploring ways to harness these microbial power plants to run fuel cells and purify sewage water, among other uses. But pinning down a microbe\u2019s electrical properties has been a challenge: The cells are much smaller than <a href=\"https:\/\/techxplore.com\/tags\/mammalian+cells\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">mammalian cells<\/a> and extremely difficult to grow in laboratory conditions.<\/p>\n<p>Now MIT engineers have developed a microfluidic technique that can quickly process small samples of <a href=\"https:\/\/techxplore.com\/tags\/bacteria\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">bacteria<\/a> and gauge a specific property that\u2019s highly correlated with bacteria\u2019s ability to produce electricity. They say that this property, known as polarizability, can be used to assess a bacteria\u2019s electrochemical activity in a safer, more efficient manner compared to current techniques.<\/p>\n<p><!-- Link: <a href=\"https:\/\/techxplore.com\/news\/2019-01-technique-electricity-producing-bacteria.html\">https:\/\/techxplore.com\/news\/2019&#45;01-technique-electricit...teria.html<\/a> --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Living in extreme conditions requires creative adaptations. For certain species of bacteria that exist in oxygen-deprived environments, this means finding a way to breathe that doesn\u2019t involve oxygen. These hardy microbes, which can be found deep within mines, at the bottom of lakes, and even in the human gut, have evolved a unique form of [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":413,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-86639","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biological"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86639","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/413"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=86639"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86639\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}